"This is getting bad," Akira-san said as she shielded me from all the attacks from the critters. "We need to find Kazuki-sama too"
"Tch, it’s my fault for letting my mind off him even for a second," Meme-san said as he cut down four vampires right behind him in two halves.
I just sat there not believing what just happened in front of me. Nii-chan was just taken away by Father in the blink of an eye and no one could do anything. It all happened so fast that I didn’t even realize it until he was not there anymore. I looked around me and everyone was fighting the vampires that were attacking them. Akira-san stayed close to me taking on twice as many as she would have taken.
I looked down at my hands and they were trembling. The place was filled with nothing but silence. No one heard it before but I remember the words Father said to me right before he left with Nii-chan and those words sent a chill down my spine. Fear took over me since that moment and my body came to freeze in its place.
"Ugh this isn’t going to work," Akira-san said as she wiped down an entire hoard with one giant lance she created from the air. "Can I leave them to you all?"
"Huh? What are you planning to do?" Hiroto-san said as he kept shooting at the vampires. "They have no end to their numbers, no matter how many we shoot, they don’t stop coming"
"At this rate, we may run out of ammo," Akito-san expressed his worries.
"Leave it to us," Meme-san said as if understanding what Akira-san’s intentions were. As soon as she got the green light, Akira-san grabbed me by my waist and leaped high into the sky then before we knew it, we were in another room. This was more like a bedroom of sorts.
She let go of me and I stood in place still in a daze. My eyes looked around the room and I could recognize it. I remember sleeping in this room. It wasn’t my main room but sometimes the entire place gets so confusing to navigate inside, that I just sleep in one of the empty bedrooms. There was still my blanket in the room and the little vials of blood that Father gave me. The ones that had Nii-chan’s blood in.
"I held on to those," I said with my eyes pointing at the vails. Akira-san looked at them with a confused expression on her face. As for someone who is normally monotonous, she does have a lot of expressions to show I must say. "They were Nii-chan’s."
"Yuna-sama, what are you talking about?" Akira-san asked. She got closer to the vails and picked it up. Opening them, she could instantly recognize merely the smell that was left in them and what I was talking about. Nii-chan’s blood is so potent to the vampires that even a slight remembrance of it would be noticed by vampires having them get drawn closer to it. "Kazuki-sama…"
"I failed, Akira-san," I said as tears started growing in my eyes. Holding my face in my arms, I started sobbing as the crushing realization of the depth of the situation dawned upon me. "I failed horribly."
"What are you saying Yuna-sama?" Akira asked placing her hand on my shoulder.
I have failed. Everything that I set my mind on doing, I failed to achieve it all. I mean, how wouldn’t I? I was always so naïve and oblivious to what was and was not possible. I had my mind set on one thing and only one thing which made me fail to see if what I hoped was even possible or not. I just lived in denial and my fake fantasies.
Like a little kid.
"I didn’t want this to turn out like this Akira-san, this was not what I thought would happen," I exclaimed with my hands still trembling.
"Yuna-sama…"
"Nii-chan will be killed!" I shouted at the top of my lungs. The room was filled with silence for some seconds but was filled with the sound of my sobs again. "He will k-k-killed…all because of me…Father told me t-t-that…"
"Father did?" Akira asked and I nodded my head. She grabbed both my shoulders and shook me. I looked up at her and I could see the worry clearly in her eyes. "What did Father say exactly? And when? We heard nothing at all."
"H-he… can send his thoughts to any subordinate he wants…" I explained as remembered those words and my body shivered in fear yet again. "He said…Shiba Kazuki will be killed tonight…all thanks to me…"
"What…"
The words left nothing but dread in the room and there was complete silence. I broke into tears yet again and Akira-san just stared at me with disbelief in her eyes. The scary thing was that because Father was the one who said it, it did mean that it was the truth. No one would be able to stop him from making this a lie.
"I just wanted to help Nii-chan find his partner…and that’s all. I thought if I would go there, Father would maybe listen to me for a bit and not kill him but it was too dumb of an idea," I said with my head held down. "I don’t want any of them to die, and I certainly don’t want Father to kill Nii-chan."
"I’m sorry Yuna-sama but that was really naïve and dumb of you to think that it was even a possibility," Akira-san said breaking her usual character and patting my shoulder. "But now what’s done is done. We can’t change what our thoughts were before entering this place or what our intentions were too. Right now, Kazuki-sama is caught up in a fight with Father and we have no idea where he is. I tried to sense for him but it is as if his entire presence has vanished along with Father. If we don’t find him, his death is inevitable."
"I…see…" I said still trembling at my place. Akira-san placed her hand on my shoulder and I looked at her.
"No need to be scared, I’ll protect you. You are Kazuki-sama’s sister and I have sworn my life to serve and protect him and I will do the same for you because that is what Kazuki-sama has asked me to do," she said trying to fill my heart with a little determination. I looked at my hands and clenched them into a fist.
"Okay, let’s go then…" I said and we exited the room. I looked back to look at it one last time knowing once I leave out of here, I won’t be able to ever come back.
Nii-chan is my blood-related family and Father took me in and took care of me for as long as I can remember so I can’t hold anything against him either. There is a saying I heard once that blood is thicker than water but never understood what it meant even if I asked for an explanation of it from Father. All I was given were hypothetical situations with open-ended questions about what I would have to choose if there were ever a need.
"Which is it the Yuna-chan?" Father would ask but I could never give a wholehearted answer.
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"Water, if they have spent longer together and created a very strong bond," I would always reply but still at one side of my mind was a question lingering is that the truth for me?
"Hey, Akira-san," I said out loud and Akira-san turned to look at me. "Is blood really thicker than water?"
"Obviously, it is, the density of blood is gr- "
"I think I got my answer, thank you," I said cutting her mid-sentence.
We left the place and started running down the hallway. I had a very familiar feel just moving around in them yet a very unfamiliar one too. Where this place was leading us was not known to us. Everything in this place was random and there was no way to predict where things would be. There are so many places here that I haven’t even seen them all so I don’t even know where Father could have taken Nii-chan. We could have used the same route that he took as he took Nii-chan away but since Akira-san teleported us here, there is no knowing where we have to go.
"Akira-san, why did we not just follow the route that Father took?" I asked her.
"I tried but I couldn’t pinpoint where he exactly is, so I just moved us to the closest place that I could feel his presence," she explained.
"Wait, his presence? But how? Even I couldn’t sense his presence," I said completely confused.
"Since I have the ability to manipulate air, however, I want to, my ability to smell is greatly heightened than anyone else," she explained. "Moreover, the smell or more accurately the presence I felt was not exactly of Father…it was Kazuki-sama…"
"So, are we running in a random direction just hoping that we find him?" I complained.
"Absolutely not, that will waste too much of our energy for no real reason. I am scanning the place as we speak for Kazuki-sama’s presence," Akira-san explained. "And it’s easier for me since I…drank his blood…"
"I see, well then, let’s hurry," I said to Akira-san and she nodded. Before I knew it, we both were standing before standing before a large silver door. We both looked at each other and then looked back at the door. "Now what do we do?"
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